Process-driven strategies: Customer processes

Brand equity is only a small part of identifying, acquiring and retaining customers, which are crucial processes as emerging markets add a billion consumers to the global marketplace. While MNCs in the developed world expect more than half of their growth in the next decade to come from emerging markets, they are quickly realising that emerging-market consumers do not constitute a single bloc. In each market, consumers must be identified, segmented and prioritised.
  • Many emerging market CEOs tend to focus on customers in local markets. They have a great advantage of understanding local markets, and often have a better instinct about how to tailor products and services for consumers’ needs.

  • Emerging markets present another challenge: the presence of significant numbers of low-income consumers. Meeting the needs of consumers at the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ requires more than creating low-cost copies of developed-market products.
 Highlight: Although many emerging countries have opened up their markets to MNCs, data on consumer preferences, consumption patterns, creditworthiness and other key factors are generally scarce.
Videos: CEO insights on emerging markets
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